Happy holiday season! (all year round)

Add observances of Teachers’ Day, the three-day Chinese Lunar New Year, International Labour Day, the Mid-Year Bank Holiday, Loy Krathong and Christmas and it adds up to 29 days that are good for a party.

Add 96 Saturdays and Sundays and we hit a total of 125 days.

There are also many regional festivals where we can join in the fun and frolics, such as Chon Buri’s Buffalo Races, Loei’s Phi Ta Khon, Ubon Ratchathani’s Candle Festival and Phuket’s Vegetarian Festival, so there are many more opportunities for a party. And as a sign of solidarity we could join our Muslim brothers and sisters on their festive days.

Thais may be xenophobic in other ways, but that hasn’t stopped them embracing other Western festivities such as Valentine’s Day and Halloween, so let’s add them to the total.

This year I noticed an increasing trend of the restaurant and catering trade to cash in on US Thanksgiving Day, so let’s embrace it too.

With a little bit of effort we could expand this exponentially. Take the UK Guy Fawkes’ Day, French Bastille Day, a few days for a German Beerfest, throw in Thai adaptations of an Italian Carnivale or New Orleans’ Mardi Gras, let’s all dress in green for St Patrick’s Day, and soon we could party 365 days a year.

The government could legislate for Leap Years, creating a special holiday to celebrate February 29, so we would have that covered too.

Of course we would have to ease immigration labour laws to allow more Myanmar, Cambodian and Lao workers into Thailand, creating an army of latter-day helots to do the work for us.

But what the heck. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

David Brown

Rayong